American writer: Tik Tok, not Twitter, is the real danger

American columnist Mark A. Theisen said that the panic over Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is greatly exaggerated. It does not pose any threat to democracy in America. What really threatens is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s control of the TikTok application.

explained in article He told the Washington Post that the popular social media application, TikTok, used by the Chinese Communist Party, collects unprecedented reams of data on more than 100 million American users, adding that TikTok allows Beijing to infiltrate Americans’ living rooms.

And the writer quoted – a former specialist in foreign influence operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – as saying that TikTok records all your contacts, determines your location the moment you open the application, and learns about your viewing and online shopping habits, and your habits. Outside the app and your online habits, it gives China the ability to track what other websites you go to, know your username and password, the content of your text messages, even if they are encrypted, and more.

Everything is seen in China

The article stated that – earlier this year – the American BuzzFeed website obtained recordings of 80 internal TikTok meetings that showed that China had repeatedly accessed the data of American users, and in September 2021 a member of the “Department of Trust” admitted And safety” in TikTok that “everything is seen in China.”

The writer wonders what China can do with all the data it collects. He replied that it collects information on millions of Americans, for later use for national security or commercial espionage.

He asked: If Americans do not tolerate their government collecting so much sensitive personal information about them, why would we tolerate a hostile foreign government doing so? He added that today the Chinese Communist Party not only collects phone numbers, but also collects detailed “lifestyle” intelligence information for more than 40% of Americans.